Molly Suttle 9-22-11 7th Period Linear Regression Project Doctors and medicine have always played a huge

part in the health of our country. Imagine being sick, and not having anywhere to go. Millions of lives are saved every day through hospitals, clinics, and offices all over. My hope is to be able to save some of those lives when I get older. Medicine has always been an interest of mine, and I would love to attend medical school after college. Without the study of medicine the United States would be a completely different country, which is why I have chosen to research and see if this applies to countries all over the world. Does the amount of doctors actually make a difference? Do people actually live longer if they have access to medicine?
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Life Expectancy

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Number of Doctors per 100,000 People When entering my information in the graph above, I put the number of doctors on the x-axis and the life expectancy on the y-axis because the number of doctors is the independent variable. If I were to change the independent variable, the dependent variable would change with it, whereas the results might not be the same if the roles were switched. My linear regression equation would look like this: y=0.04x+60.70. 0.04 is considered the slope, and 60.70 is the y-intercept. This means that for each additional doctor per 100,000 people, the average life expectancy rises 0.04 years. The average life expectancy for a country with zero doctors would be 60.70 years. Please keep in mind that this is an average, and that

some countries do not apply to this statement. For example, Somalia as 4 doctors per 100,000 people, yet their life expectancy is only 50.4 years. There are other contributors to life expectancy, like access to food and water, and money spent on medical supplies. If Somalia were to increase its annual spending on medical supplies or water filtration, the life expectancy would most likely rise. My r-value for this equation is 0.62. This means that I have a positive slope, and that my data does NOT equal a perfect line, but it is pretty strong. Having an r-value of 0.62 makes sense because by looking at the graph, it is obvious that my data does not equal a perfect line, but you can tell that it is positive. Through the linear regression equation y=0.04x+60.70, I can predict the life expectancies or number of doctors by plugging numbers into the equation. If a country has 500 doctors per 100,000 people, the life expectancy would be 80.7 years. Since life expectancy is on the y-axis, I would plug in the 500 into the x-value in the equation. My final statement would look like this: y=0.04(500)+60.70. You can do the same thing for finding out the number of doctors by just plugging the life expectancy into the y-value. If a country had a life expectancy of 100 years, the number of doctors per 100,000 people would be 982. A country with 625 doctors per 100,000 people would have an average life expectancy of 85.70 years. A career that would most likely use this type of analysis would be the people working for Doctors Without Borders. Doctors Without Borders sends medical help to countries whose matter of survival is threatened, whether its by natural disasters, malnutrition, or war. A country with a very low amount of doctors would be an excellent candidate because they would need help providing check-ups, as well as treating epidemics and the malnourished. Countries like Italy or Cuba would not qualify because they have some of the highest amounts of doctors. Burundi or Mozambique, on the other hand, would most definitely qualify since they only have 3 doctors per 100,000. Through gathering the information, creating a scatterplot, and figuring out the linear equation and r-value, it has been proved that the amount of doctors in a country actually does make a difference. A country with a lower amount of doctors generally has a lower life expectancy. Looking closer, it also seems like the more developed countries are the ones with more doctors. The reasoning behind this is that these countries have more money to spend on building good quality medical schools, and people have more money to spend on colleges. This is not an easily changeable dilemma. The best way to help this problem is by creating more organizations like Doctors Without Borders. This way we can spread out our doctors so all places in the world receive the medical help that they deserve, and in the end, make the world a healthier place.

Bibliography do the maths. "Physicians per 1,000 people statistics - Countries compared NationMaster." NationMaster - World Statistics, Country Comparisons. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Sept. 2011 <http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_phy_per_1000_peo physicians-per-1-000-people>. "CIA - The World Factbook." Welcome to the CIA Web Site Central Intelligence Agency. Web. 25 Sept. 2011. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html>.